HD EMR Boot/Recovery disk with Acronis

[sleddriver]

I've been given an old Dell 15" Inspiron B130 laptop by a neighbor who's kids just clogged it with junk. Unfortunately, they can't find the original Dell MS XP disks that came with it. So I went through it with CCleaner, defrag'd, scanned with MSE & malwarebyes, downloaded all the XP updates, cleaned & defrag'd again and now it runs much faster. It currently has no personal data of mine on it.

(I do have other Dell MS OS XP reinstall disks but they're for a desktop. Didn't think they would work).

I imaged the HD using Acronis. I thought when making an EMR boot disc, it would have this backup on it. Instead it's only a 'lite' version of the program. Anyway I can incorporate the image I just made with the 'lite' version onto a disk? Or do I need to use multiple optical disks? I could also use a memory stick here.....

Not sure the best way or "most efficient" way of doing this. Please advise.

 

[Rand]

how big is the image you made?

i usually use a usb hdd when restoring.

 

[sleddriver]

Well I just turned it off to start cleaning the case & screen. I'll report back when I turn it on. I think Acronis broke it into 2 files, one is about 4, maybe 4.5GB and the second ~ 1.5G. By the time I removed all the junk off, I had it down to 9G/80G.

 

[Rand]

well it wont fit on one dvd then.. maybe make a second partition on the hdd .. 10gb and put it there?

of course if the hdd goes bad its gone.

 

[sleddriver]

Looks like I'll need to make a set of disks to keep with it and than store the files on my desktops Archive HD.

They've given me a second LT, just like the first. Except it won't boot. Tried all sorts of methods (recovery console, copied boot.ini, ntldr & ntdetect.com from the working LT, ran chkdsk /r, booted it with a Ubuntu live cd to examine what's on there, etc.)

I made an bootable ISO disk with Hitachi's DFT utility, which found nothing under the quick scan, but indicated "one or more corrupted sectors found" under the advanced scan. It's currently attempting a 'corrupted sector repair'. It's about 90% complete.

Thanks for replying.

 

[Rand]

Originally Posted By: sleddriver
Looks like I'll need to make a set of disks to keep with it and than store the files on my desktops Archive HD.

They've given me a second LT, just like the first. Except it won't boot. Tried all sorts of methods (recovery console, copied boot.ini, ntldr & ntdetect.com from the working LT, ran chkdsk /r, booted it with a Ubuntu live cd to examine what's on there, etc.)

I made an bootable ISO disk with Hitachi's DFT utility, which found nothing under the quick scan, but indicated "one or more corrupted sectors found" under the advanced scan. It's currently attempting a 'corrupted sector repair'. It's about 90% complete.

Thanks for replying.


sounds like a hardware issue or possible virus/malware.

 

[Colt45ws]

Can you just get a hold of a OEM XP install disc? For the same version it has a key for. Then you can just do a clean install, though it sounds like it might need a new HDD.
If the product key is worn off the laptop, which is common, Ive found a few utilities by searching that will pull the product key from the registry.

 

[sleddriver]

Wow..what a long, weird trail this one turned out to be. Never heard of it before. Finally was able to get the F8 timed right, booted in safe mode, noticed the last file executed was ....sys32\drivers\mup.sys. Did a search on this and stumbled upon a link with many experiencing the same thing!

Turns out the registry was corrupted!! I manually restored it (great directions), rebooted and it worked!! Amazing. . . .
Resolving Mup.sys hang issue.

Also: Manual Restore of XP Registry

 

[sleddriver]

Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
Can you just get a hold of a OEM XP install disc? For the same version it has a key for. Then you can just do a clean install, though it sounds like it might need a new HDD.
If the product key is worn off the laptop, which is common, Ive found a few utilities by searching that will pull the product key from the registry.

I do have a Dell OEM XP install disk, but it's for a Dimension desktop. Will it work with an Inspiron laptop?

Both stickers are still intact. It would be nice to have the XP disk. I also wasn't able to determine if either HD has the 'hidden' partition. Can you suggest a free disk utility? My version of PartitionMagic is too old.

 

[Colt45ws]

I dont see any reason why it would not. You will just have to get the drivers since you dont have the drivers disc that Dell typically supplies. Best way to do that is to use another machine on Dell support site and type in the service tag for the machine. Then Download all the drivers it comes up with on to a USB key or a writable CD.

 

[sleddriver]

Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
I dont see any reason why it would not. You will just have to get the drivers since you dont have the drivers disc that Dell typically supplies. Best way to do that is to use another machine on Dell support site and type in the service tag for the machine. Then Download all the drivers it comes up with on to a USB key or a writable CD.
Been working on this somemore...On the 'better' LT (the one I spent hours cleaning, defrag'g, virus checking, etc.) it takes 2:15 for the desktop to appear! I'm puzzled as to the delay. Turned off many items in the start-up folder, uninstalled everything I wasn't interested in, doubled the RAM to 1G, compacted the registry by ~20%. The HD is FAT instead of NTFS; came that way from Dell.

Been researching reinstalling the OS from scratch, but first wanted to know if the HD has the 'factory OEM clean' partition on it? Found this site very interesting. Made a floppy boot disc, but the results are inconclusive so far. I'll have to do more reading. It could be that the neighbors can't find the OEM disks because Dell never supplied them in the first place.

Never done this before, so it's all new to me. What IS interesting is that the 2nd laptop, the one with the corrupted resistry, FLIES with the simple replacement registry noted above. The desktop shows up within 15 sec of hitting the power button.

I went to the Dell site to download the drivers. Because I wasn't using IE, I have to do them one-at-a-time!! What a PITA! Wasn't able to find IE on my machine, guess I zero-ed it out years ago. I use FF.

My first plan is to determine if the hidden partition exists. If so, then I reformat with it, then image with Acronis. If not, then I'll reformate, convert to NTFS, lay down WXP, follow up with a WSUS offline disk, then reload the Dell drivers in the correct order. Once done, I'll image with Acronis and use that as the Origin.

Thanks to all for weighing in. Please chime in with any further suggestions.

 

[Colt45ws]

Even 'iexplore' from the run box wont come up with IE?

 

[sleddriver]

Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
Even 'iexplore' from the run box wont come up with IE?
Good one that. Thanks. Still working on this....

 

[sleddriver]

Thanks. I did use IE to get the dell dwnld manager, which dwnld'd everything for the service tag I typed in. It sure was a hassle though trying to figure out what went where when installing the Dell drivers as the filenames are just numbers and Win isn't smart enough to figure out what it needs. Then again, there's probably a much more elegant way to install them than I did.

I found a link to a program called MSUSOFFLINE and used it to create an .iso of SP3 and other updates. Pretty slick, but unfortunately it didn't get everything like I thought. More about this later.

I erased the single existing FAT32 partition, created a new one in NTFS and reinstalled XP from the Dell OEM disk. When that was done, I used the .iso to upgrade to SP3. However, it didn't get everything like I thought. When I logged into MS, I discovered there were another 120 security updates I didn't have! I let it do that while working on something else.

Still working on tweaking the installation before I image. I ran CCleaner which removed a lot of install junk, then defrag'd with Piriform Defraggler, which took about 1-1/2hrs. As the second machine is just like this one, it'll be easy to reformat/reinstall this image onto it. Everything will be brand new. It's taken the process count from 50 to 28. Sure boots faster.

Q: What type of partition/disk tool do you recommend? I used PartitionMagic for a long time, but now it's defunct (and too old). I noticed Acronis has one; I used their backup program.

This was my first time reinstalling XP on a laptop without the original disks. I learned a lot. I'll have myself two nice LT's when I'm all done.

 

[sleddriver]

Did some searching in the archives here and found references to three:
1. Paragon's Partition Manager.
2. EaseUS's Partition Master.
3. Gparted/Parted Magic

All have free home versions.